“You think Mrs. Norwood may actually know something?” I asked.
“If she’s not gaga, I think she might,” Melba said. “I figure she’s in her late eighties, at least. I’m praying that she’s still mentally all there.”
“Good luck,” I said. “I hope she can help us.”
“I’ll let you know,” Melba said.
“We’ll see you out,” I told her.
“No need, I know the way.” Melba gave a little wave. “Talk to you later.”
“Bye,” I said. Diesel added a couple of meows to my farewell.
“Okay, buddy,” I said to Diesel. “It’s time to wrap some presents. I know you’ll help me, but don’t help too much, okay?” Diesel was like a kitten around ribbon and boxes. He couldn’t resist them. Other than locking him in another room while I wrapped gifts, however, I didn’t know how to stop him. The trick was to distract him with a box and some ribbon, and I could wrap while he played.
I needed a large flat surface. I could use my bed, because I knew by now Azalea would have stripped it, remade it with clean linens, and put the bedspread on. The kitchen table would be better, however, and unless Azalea needed it for the next half an hour or so, that would be the best place to work.
Azalea was working at the stove when I entered the kitchen toting my two bags of books. I had left them in the hall, thanks to the wonderful surprise I’d had earlier. I needed to find the wrapping paper, bows, and tape, and then retrieve the other items from the car.
“Azalea, are you going to need the table for the next thirty minutes or so?” I asked.
“No, you go right ahead with whatever you want to do,” she said.
“Thanks. I need to wrap some presents. Shouldn’t take too long.” I set the bags on the table. The wrapping paper and other gift paraphernalia resided year-round in the hall closet. Once I’d retrieved what I needed, I went to the car and brought in the toys I’d bought for the kittens and Diesel, as well as Helen Louise’s bottles of perfume.
I didn’t need to wrap the toys for the kittens, and they certainly didn’t need ribbons to chew on and potentially eat, so I set those aside. I found a suitable box in the utility room and put it down near the table. Diesel immediately crawled into it for an inspection. I tossed him a couple of old bows that had seen better days, and he batted them aside. While he had fun getting in and out of the box and batting the bows around—out of Azalea’s way, because he was smart enough to realize he had to stay clear—I started wrapping.
The perfume bottles in their lovely packaging provided little challenge. I knew the books would be a little hard to wrap neatly, at least for me. First I had to sort the books by recipient, but that didn’t take long. I wrapped and labeled as I went and soon had a tidy pile of gifts. There was one stack of seven books left over, but those didn’t need wrapping, as they were for me. Somehow I always managed to buy books for myself when I went Christmas shopping.
I began to clear the table, but my cell phone sounded. I had a new text message.
From Kanesha. It read: New information. Call me when available.
TWENTY-NINE
I finished the task at hand and found room for the gifts I’d wrapped in the hall closet. Then I went to the den and called Kanesha’s cell phone. I perched on the corner of my desk. Diesel chose the sofa and stretched out to relax.
Kanesha answered right away. “Had an interesting talk with Jared Carter a few minutes ago.”
“In your office?” I asked. How long had it been since Melba stormed out of his house? I glanced at my watch. Close to ninety minutes.
“Yes, why do you ask?” Kanesha said.
“Oh, no reason,” I replied lamely. “Just wondered. I thought he’d be busy pulling teeth, I guess.”
“He made the time to show up here and asked to see me,” Kanesha said. “I asked him if he was Gerry Albritton’s silent partner, and he admitted it right away. Surprised him, I believe, that I had figured it out. I didn’t mention you.”
“Good.” I didn’t want Jared Carter to know I played any role in this. “Was he coming to you to tell you this himself?”
“Yes,” Kanesha replied. “He also told me he thought Gerry had been embezzling from the account he set up to fund her real estate purchases.”
“That’s serious,” I said, hoping I sounded surprised enough to fool her.
“The amount he mentioned is serious,” Kanesha said. “I asked him how certain he was that Gerry was the culprit. Was there anyone else who could have done it? Also asked that.”
“Was there?” I asked.
“He hemmed and hawed a bit, but he finally said that Gerry’s assistant, Jincy Bruce, could have done it. He seems to think she’s smart enough to have figured out how, but she can’t be all that smart if she thought she could get away with it.”
I had a sudden thought about that. “Unless you can prove that she murdered Gerry, she could get away with it. That might have been her motive, if she’s the killer.”
“I’m trying to locate Ms. Bruce so I can talk to her,” Kanesha said.
I remembered then that I had seen Jincy earlier, coming out of the office building where Jared Carter had his practice. I related this to Kanesha. While she pondered that, I tried to work out Jared’s potential movements this morning. If Jincy had seen him in his office, and Melba had talked to him at his home, and then he had went to Kanesha’s office, he had had a busy morning.
“Carter didn’t say that he had talked to Ms. Bruce this morning. If she did go to see him, he might have asked her about the missing money,” Kanesha said. “I’m going to talk to him again. If he did confront Ms. Bruce, she may have bolted. Talk to you later.” She ended the call.
I remained where I was, cell phone in hand, and considered the idea of Jincy Bruce as the murderer. I didn’t have any idea how long she had worked for Gerry, but maybe long enough to become aware of her personal habits. For example, her predilection for brandy in a particular snifter. Jincy would know that putting poison in that snifter on a night when everyone else was drinking champagne out of flutes would ensure she’d avoid poisoning anyone else by mistake.
The times I had seen her during the party, she had been at the door. That didn’t mean, however, she couldn’t have slipped away long enough to add the poison to Gerry’s brandy. There were so many people milling around, not many would have noticed her absence from the front door or her presence as she moved through the rooms in search of Gerry and her snifter.
One potential sticking point, when I considered any suspect, was the poison itself. Did Jincy have any kind of access to poisonous substances? It would be a whopping coincidence if she, like Tammy, had the knowledge and skill to distill it for herself. Maybe she and Tammy were working together, I thought for just a moment. But that was a little too far out to take seriously. Identification of the poison that killed Gerry should help narrow down the suspects to only those who had access to it.
For now, I thought, Tammy—despite the alibi she claimed to have—and Jincy were strong candidates for the role of murderer. But I was forgetting someone, I realized. Deirdre Thompson. The conversation Helen Louise and I had heard had been ugly. The women obviously despised each other. What I gathered from Gerry’s part of the conversation was that she had something she could hold over Deirdre’s head in order to force Deirdre to do whatever it was she wanted from the doyenne of Athena society.
I couldn’t recall ever hearing a breath of scandal about Deirdre Thompson. She had the reputation of pinching pennies, despite her rumored wealth, but that wasn’t anything to encourage blackmail. I hadn’t discussed Deirdre with Kanesha, although Helen Louise and I had certainly related what we overheard to the deputy. Had Kanesha ruled Deirdre out somehow? I would have thought she had as much opportunity as anyone to poison Gerry’s brandy. The murder had to be premeditated, because who carries poison on them a
s a regular thing? Deirdre could have brought it and seized the chance when she saw that snifter.
Even if I didn’t recall ever having heard about any scandals involving Deirdre Thompson, I knew two people who might have. One of them was working in the kitchen; the other might be upstairs on the third floor. I headed for the kitchen, texting Stewart on the way. I asked him to join us in the kitchen if he was still at home.
Diesel scrambled off the sofa when he saw me head for the door. He meowed loudly a couple of times, as if to ask me where I was going in such a hurry. “Going to talk to Azalea,” I told him.
Azalea wasn’t in the kitchen when Diesel and I first walked in, and I started to call out for her. She appeared behind me carrying an empty laundry basket. Startled, I turned when I heard her footsteps.
“Were you looking for me?” she inquired.
“Yes, I wanted to talk to you,” I said. My cell phone buzzed, and I checked it. Stewart had responded to my text. Down in a few.
“What about?” Azalea set the empty basket on the table and regarded me calmly.
I knew I had to approach this in the right way, because Azalea, as a rule, did not hold with gossiping about anyone. In the past, however, she had occasionally given me useful information about people.
“Why don’t we sit down for a minute?” I suggested.
Azalea pulled out a chair and sat. I did, too, and Diesel stretched out on the floor by me.
“It’s about the murder that took place at the party the other night,” I said. “Kanesha is investigating it, of course, and I’m helping her in my own way.”
Azalea nodded.
“One problem is that no one seems to know who Gerry Albritton really was. The other is the motives anyone might have had for wanting her dead.”
“I can’t help you with that first part,” Azalea replied. “I don’t know who she was, either. Don’t recall ever knowing anybody with that name. Same with the second part, since I didn’t know her.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “I think you probably can help with the second part, though. In the past you have shared information about people you used to work for, or that friends or relatives might have known or worked for. I’m hoping you might have information in this case about one person in particular.”
Azalea’s tone was not encouraging. “Who might that be?”
“Deirdre Thompson,” I said.
“Why do you want to talk about that dreary old biddy?” Stewart asked as he entered the kitchen. “Sorry, couldn’t help overhearing. Is that why you wanted to talk to me?”
“Yes, I thought that you and Azalea might be able to answer my questions about her.”
Stewart pulled out a chair and sat. “What questions?”
I glanced at Azalea, and she nodded.
“Are there any scandals or rumors of scandals in her past that would embarrass her badly if they became known now? Especially if someone could prove the rumors true?”
Azalea and Stewart looked at each other. Slowly, they nodded, almost in unison.
“Rumors, certainly,” Stewart said. Azalea nodded in agreement.
“Rumors about what?” I asked. Surely they weren’t going to turn coy now.
“There have been several over the years,” Stewart said.
“Murder,” Azalea said at the same time.
THIRTY
“Murder?” I said.
My two informants nodded their heads. Stewart indicated that Azalea should go first.
“You know she’s been married several times,” Azalea said.
“Three times. Is that right?”
“Yes,” Stewart replied.
“Always older men,” Azalea said. “People say she married them for money. Her family’s been around ever since Athena started up. Used to be, they had a lot of money, but her daddy wasn’t too good with holding on to it. By the time she was grown, they were just barely hanging on to that old house she lives in.”
“So, she married money,” I said.
“Yes,” Azalea replied. “Every time. She was kind of pretty when she was young. Some people said she really loved Mr. Thompson, her first husband, but he had to be nearly forty years older than her. She keeps going back to his name, so I reckon there must be something in that.”
“Maybe,” Stewart said. “From what I’ve always heard, he left her about half a million, and she parlayed that into three or four million. She’s pretty shrewd when it comes to investments, supposedly.”
“If she had that kind of money, why did she keep marrying for more?” I asked. “Wasn’t she satisfied with several million?”
“Not our Deirdre,” Stewart said. “You know how notoriously cheap she is, right?”
“Yes, I’ve heard stories,” I replied.
“People like her, seems like they always want more money even if they’ve got a lot,” Azalea said, shaking her head. “She grew up poor, but real proud of who her family was, and I reckon she doesn’t want to be poor again.”
“So, she married twice more, both times to older, rich men,” Stewart said.
“I guess murder comes into it because people think she killed her husbands to make sure she got the money before they could spend it all,” I said.
“That’s pretty much it,” Stewart said.
“Is there any basis to these rumors? Did anything particular happen to set people off talking about her?” I asked.
“Mr. Thompson came down with pneumonia real bad,” Azalea said. “He wasn’t strong to start with—had a few strokes—and that pneumonia, he just couldn’t shake it off. Nobody talked about murder when he died.”
“No, that started when number two died of pneumonia,” Stewart said in a wry tone.
“Don’t tell me number three died of pneumonia, too,” I said.
“Okay, I won’t tell you.” Stewart grinned, but Azalea simply looked pained.
“Mrs. Thompson has always been real cheap about hiring people to clean and do things like that. Hardly anyone ever stayed with her more than a few months,” Azalea said. “She finally found her a strong girl that could do the cleaning and some of the cooking. The girl didn’t know enough to realize she wasn’t getting fair pay, but I don’t think she had any family or friends to tell her different.”
“She was slow, as they used to say,” Stewart said. “A euphemism for mental impairment. She was the only other person in the house when husbands two and three came down with pneumonia.”
“And if she was mentally impaired, Deirdre Thompson could get away with murder, and the servant wouldn’t understand what had happened.”
“Yes,” Stewart said. “Pneumonia can be induced, and the old codgers she roped into marrying her weren’t hearty physical specimens to begin with. She picked her pigeons carefully.”
“Did anyone—anyone official, that is—ever look into their deaths to find out whether they’d been helped along?” I asked.
“Not seriously, at any rate,” Stewart said.
“I don’t think so,” Azalea said. “People just started talking, not too long after Mr. Reardon died. He was number two. Mrs. Thompson doesn’t have many friends. Most people don’t like her because she’s so stingy. She goes around like some grand duchess and acts like she’s always giving money to charity.”
Stewart grinned. “I know for a fact she does give money to charities, because I was briefly on the board of one. I saw how much she gave.”
“How much?” I asked, because I knew he wanted me to.
“Twenty dollars,” Stewart said. “Other people in her income bracket were giving twenty thousand or more.”
“That is pretty darn cheap,” I said.
“Word gets around,” Azalea said. “Not much is ever secret, and when you don’t treat people right, well, that just makes people talk more because they don’t like you and want to
drag you down.”
I couldn’t argue with that analysis. Since I had moved back to Athena several years ago, I had seen and heard such things.
“What happened to the mentally impaired woman? Is she still working for Deirdre?” I asked.
“No, she died six or seven years ago,” Stewart said. “She was probably close to forty by then. Don’t you think?” he said to Azalea.
She nodded. “She worked for Mrs. Thompson for over twenty years, and she got buried in the cheapest coffin you could imagine.” She sighed. “People say by the time she died, she was thin as a rail. Used to be kind of heavyset.”
I was considerably appalled. Not only had Deirdre gone for the cheapest possible funeral, she had evidently also kept the poor housekeeper on starvation rations. I wondered if that had any connection to her cause of death.
Stewart caught my eye and nodded. He read my expression of mingled disgust and horror all too easily.
“That woman is truly a piece of work,” I said, “if all of this is true.”
“Nobody knows for certain,” Azalea said. “Lots of talk, but nobody’s ever proved any of it. The funeral parlor knows the truth about the cheap coffin and what that poor housekeeper looked like, but they’ve never said a word. I don’t know where all that talk got started.”
“Is there anything else?” I asked. “I mean, what you’ve told me is horrifying enough, but there could be more.”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Stewart said.
I looked to Azalea. She shook her head. “Nothing else I know.”
“It’s my turn to ask a question,” Stewart said. “What is all this in aid of? It must have something to do with Gerry Albritton’s murder.”
“It does,” I said.
“Was Gerry trying to blackmail Deirdre?” Stewart asked.
“Possibly,” I said. “Look, this shouldn’t go any further, and I know you will both keep it to yourselves.” I waited until they both nodded before I continued. “Helen Louise and I overheard most of a private conversation between Deirdre and Gerry at the party. It sounded like Gerry was threatening Deirdre with something she knew.”
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